“Was it worth it for you?” Zin said.

  Judge Corvoran banged her gavel.

  “Yes!” Elodiz said. “I would do it all again. I would kill every one of them to see this country great again.”

  “Your worships …” the prosecutor began.

  Judge Corovan raised her hand. “It’s all right,” she said. She sighed. “Ta Muvard, the state understands that there were crimes that had to be committed during times of war. Great crimes, which were indeed sanctioned by the state. But crimes done in service for any cause are still crimes in this court. Crimes committed in war must be—”

  “This is a circus,” Elodiz said. “This is not justice—”

  “I’m afraid it is our justice,” Corovan said. “You understood when you committed these acts that there would be a reckoning. Do you have his paperwork, prosecutor?”

  “I do.” The prosecutor handed Corovan one of her green files.

  Corovan pulled a thin, government-caliber slide from the sheaf. “Is this your signature and handprint, Ta Muvard?”

  “It is,” Elodiz said. His face was still angry, but his tone was lower.

  “And do you remember what you signed here?”

  Elodiz said nothing.

  “I will read it aloud to the court,” Corovan said. “In the interests of full transparency. This is the first case where a senior official disputes the charges.” She read aloud, “I, the undersigned, agree that the War Office will commission me for certain crimes that will aid and abet the ending of the current conflict with the Enemy. In engaging in these duties for the state, I understand that on the cessation of hostilities, I may be considered a collaborator and put on trial for crimes against my country. I understand that committing violence against another human being remains illegal in our state, and I expect to be prosecuted for these crimes to the fullest extent of the law at war’s end.”

  “Does that sound right?” Corovan said.

  Elodiz nodded.

  Corovan held up the page. “We are each called to a singular purpose when faced with an enemy greater than ourselves. But that does not mean that we can sacrifice our humanity. Do you have any regrets to air in this court?”

  “Yes,” Elodiz said, “Just one.” He gazed at Zin again. “I regret only that I have built a world where my daughter will be a hero, and have a medal pinned to her chest … but I will not live long enough to see it.”

  Judge Corovan raised her gavel.

  “And—” Elodiz said, holding up a hand. “I regret that when she marches into the ovens, of her own volition, her chest covered in medals, that I will not live to hear her say I was right.”

  The gavel came down. The Judge read his sentence. A sanctified death. It was something.

  As they escorted Elodiz from the room, he looked back once at Zin. She kept her face neutral, knowing how many recording devices were trained on her impassive face.

  Then it was over.

  The crowd stood. A few reporters tried to ask her questions. She rebuffed them. Zin and Merriz sat still beside one another for some minutes while the theater cleared out. Then, finally, Merriz pulled on his hat. “Well, that was something,” he said.

  Zin sat motionless. “I didn’t know they asked him to do it,” she said.

  “Hey,” Merriz said, “it doesn’t matter why someone does something, does it? You said you didn’t care why. You want justice? Well, that’s what it looks like.”

  “And we’re next.”

  “I read the protocol too,” he said. “I can sing it in my sleep. If you believe in a peaceful country, if you believe that’s really what we were before the war, well, peaceful places don’t have monsters, Zin. We’re building a world that’s got no place for us. Best enjoy the time we’ve got.”

  Zin imagined it just as her father had said, her standing up in court the way he was now and agreeing that she had, indeed, shot collaborators and punched women in the face and tortured people, her people, and the Enemy at the behest of the state, and then she would have to straighten her spine and walk of her own volition to her fiery death.

  In the end, no one could kill her or Merriz or any of the other Justicars. They had to die by their own hand, of their own volition. And what they would leave behind was their children and their grandchildren, to create a society run by human beings who had never known war and had never committed violence. They would sacrifice themselves at Savazan’s feet to build a peaceful world for another two hundred years until they did it all over again. Peace was the one thing she believed in. The one thing she would kill for and the one thing that she would ultimately die for.

  It was in the protocol.

  Merriz tapped her hat. “Come now,” he said. “We have seven hundred and thirty more names in case file 446. Who will bring them to justice, if not us?”

  Zin pulled on her hat. “I’m fond of justice,” she said and resolved to eat more glutinous treats because her time was short and the price of peace was high.

  She and Merriz walked out into the grimy dusk of the latest rotation of the sun. If Zin squinted, she could almost see the stars.

  Broker of Souls

  Sasha was good at what she did. She had to figure out what a client wanted by look alone: angry, pensive, scared, aroused, bored, whatever. It was the job.

  She was good at it.

  This girl, this robot girl, she definitely needed something emotional, cushy, gooey, dangerous.

  “Got what you need here, kid,” Sasha said.

  “I don’t need anything a broker can offer me,” the robot girl said, moving past Sasha’s stall.

  But Sasha knew. “I’ve got guts right here,” Sasha said, “teeming with bacteria. Got some crawling with maggots, give you a real authentic experience of being alive.”

  “I don’t want the experience,” she said. “I want the real thing.”

  “No one can give you that,” Sasha said.

  “I disagree,” the robot girl said and she took Sasha by the wrist and pulled her close and smiled wide with her sharp, shiny teeth. “You know what would make me feel more alive than anything I could buy?”

  “Uh, dogs?” Sasha offered. Because she really liked dogs.

  “You,” the robot girl said and ate Sasha’s face.

  The One We Feed

  Where were you when Suldana got shot?

  Everyone here knows where they were, but you’ve got a raw, rotten hole in that memory of yours, right? You always do when bad things happen and you need to fess up to what went wrong.

  Let’s see if we can jog that tongue of yours loose.

  Suldana came down to me yesterday morning, sat with me over black coffee, asked me if I’d seen you. I said no. I always do.

  Don’t look at me like that. No use getting her worked up. She told me she missed you—can’t imagine why she’d feel so low about it. I never miss you at all when you go scouting in the wasteland. I’m the one who taught you to ride that motorbike at the edge without drawing attention, you know, making sure you stay just out of range of the monsters peeling in from the black. I always kinda like the respite when you go off, and the extra rations. Never know when you’ll be back—three days, three weeks. I like the quiet.Suldana doesn’t.

  More the fool, her.

  So Suldana says to me she misses you and’s wondering about where you go when you leave her. I told her you have a hankering for the river and riding motorbikes. True enough, I guess. I tried to tide her over, but she asked who you went out riding with, and I told her. Yeah, shit, I told her about them. She got all white and her hands started shaking, y’know, like she does when she’s fit to scream. I stood up and tried to calm her down. But she wouldn’t drink anymore coffee.

  She got up and went to the old radio, the one you and I cobbled together after the last junker came through, and I figured she was going to give the Call.

  Yeah, you’re paying attention now, aren’t you? Huh. Well, I tried to stop her from calling, but by this time, the color was back in her cheeks. Those butternut-colored eyes of hers were all wide and glassy, and she had her voice raised, calling me all manner of nasty names, worse than you ever called me when we have our spats. She said I was trying to break you two up. Me, after all I’ve done for her.

  I didn’t know what she was up to, yet. Maybe she didn’t either. The truth always comes as a shock to these women when they ask.

  When I finally tell them.

  Oh, keep drinking, you old sow. You’re too chicken to tell them. Someone has to. And it’s me. Always me. My burden. You leave that burden to all of us when you act like a dumb rich kid from some dead age.

  She asked what was wrong with her, that you had to be out there with them instead of her. She said you didn’t write to her anymore. You only called when she cried out over the radio, yelling that she had some fool cause for you to take up. You only called when she told you about the monster inside of her, the one that’s gunning to take us all.

  Maybe that’s all true. You don’t need to defend yourself to me. We’ve all done things we don’t care to name, let alone talk about. It’s how you survive after the fall of what you knew. You fuck like the world is ending, cause for each of us, it is, day by day. Every day is one day less you get. Might as well live it good, heh?

  I threw out the coffee. The good shit, too, not that grimy shit you leave here after one of your rampages. I threw it out … and here I’m being honest, you know … I threw it out cause I didn’t want anyone to know she’d been with me before she made the Call. Didn’t want them to know it was me that set her off. I know what comes next when you make trouble.

  My granddad said his father once told him an old story about this battle that goes on inside us all. He said there are two monsters in us, battling all the time. One is evil. It’s all that fear, anger, envy, regret, arrogance, and greed in the world. The other one is, I guess, what we’d call good. It’s compassion, peace, humility, kindness, and, I guess, generosity.

  And of course, kids always ask, what do you do when these two monsters are battling it out inside of you, the way they battle it out there in the wasteland? Which monster wins?

  My granddad, then, he’d always say, “The one you feed.”

  Kids like that story. Sounds so simple. Do more of the good, less of the bad, and good will win. But that’s all gotten blurry out here, hasn’t it? I don’t know, say, if telling Suldana lies about you is feeding a good monster or a bad one. I feel like it’s both. And what then? Who wins?

  So she puts out the Call.

  Can you see it, then? Her rucked up against the tin drum in my kitchen where that radio sits, and me rinsing out the cups with sand, stacking them back on the counter with that old chipped china plate you found in Diego-sol-Rey before the last of the lights went out, and me humming, humming some nonsense tune of my granddad’s, like nothing is going to happen, like it’s all going to go on the way it was.

  She was on that radio like it was a pipeline to God or something, and I’m standing there, just waiting. Humming.

  Waiting for the monster.

  She Called … and Called …

  … and there was only static. Static pissing and hissing like rain.

  I didn’t let out my breath til she switched the radio off, though.

  “Nobody out there,” I said. “You won’t find her out on the channels, not if she’s scavenging in the wasteland. You should let her do what she wants. Accept who she is. I did. A long time ago. It suits who I am, too. If it’s not the right fit for you … you just gotta move on.”

  “You don’t understand,” Suldana said and her little papery hands were shaking like the ass-end of a bait dog. “I’ve given up everything for her … I’ve sacrificed so much out here. She can’t be doing what you say she is.”

  I was going to ask her, but you know how I am—I try and keep out of your dramas. I don’t like drama in my life, which is why I’m content to hook up with you whenever and be free of you the rest of the time.

  Don’t make that face. You love it.

  But her, she’s different. Always has been. You should have known that. Maybe I should have, too.

  I was feeling a little less on edge, so I invited her to sit out on the porch and drink with me, that good hooch from last May, but she ran out the door ahead of me, skirts bunching up around her legs. Eye of God, I had no idea where she was going. I sure as the Womb didn’t think she was going out into the wasteland after you.

  That’d be mad, wouldn’t it?

  But I’d underestimated her.

  We both did, you and I.

  Get your chin up off the floor, dear.

  It was dark as ass out there. I followed her, cause I like to feed that good monster inside me sometimes, you know. It wasn’t all ego, then or now. Helped me sleep at time, to run after damned fool woman in the dark. Even one you were courting.

  She headed to the river. She’s younger than me, taller. I’m fit, but you know I’m not moving so fast as I used to, what with that rod in my hip and this damn flinty eye of mine. Can’t see shit, can’t walk around for shit.

  Should have been me that got shot.

  Oh, you go on and just say it out loud, what you think about what should have happened. I already see it on your face. Have the guts in that big belly of yours to speak it.

  Sure as shit, I’m harder to hit.

  It’s okay to laugh at that.

  So I follow her down to the river. The stars are out and what’s left of the moon now, less and less as pieces of it burn across the sky every night. All those heavenly bodies are glinting the hidden sun’s light back at me. Remember when I didn’t believe the sun still shone at night? Remember when my head was full of old proverbs and not a lick of fact? Yeah, well, I think it’s turned around now as I get older. Fewer facts. More proverbs.

  It’s the stories that stick.

  We pushed down through the scrub. It was one of those nights, you know, where you walk outside and the air is so heavy you think you’ll drown. Already, I could see it was gonna heat up something fierce when sunrise broke. It was that damp heat that makes the big brown moths drop outta the air and collect on the porch like dead women.

  Suldana was real insistent about walking down to that river, and I was keen on going after. Trying to be some good woman I’m not, you remember. Like I said, she was moving faster, and my shoes were for shit, and the mud was squelching up between the holes in the soles. I got stuck, took too much time …

  I saw your bike tracks there in the dirt. Suldana’s little bare footprints walked all over them. She didn’t even look at the ground, but somehow she followed them. Suldana was real quiet for a long time. She came to the path leading down to the river and disappeared down the gully there, into the brush.

  By the time I slid down there after her, she had already seen it all.

  You, Lucy, Brin, and the whole thing.

  I kinda felt sorry for her, you know, this little skinny woman with her big wide eyes, standing there in the sucking mud of the river bank, watching you fuck a couple of monsters.

  Your bike was leaning against that big twisted hybrid oak along the shore, and I imagined how it went, how she must have seen that first, and been happy, thinking she’d found you so easily, assuming you were alone.

  You and I know better.

  I figured you didn’t see her, but I could be wrong. I know Lucy saw her, though, because she pulled you down into the river, tangling you up into those tentacles of hers and dragging you and fuzzy-mouthed Brin deep into the squalling water with her.

  Suldana made a choking sound, not quite a scream—those of us who’ve lived long out here know that noise can mean death, and she did all right not being too vocal about it.

  But when I reached her, she was unsteady on her feet. I put my hand out to catch her. She grappled for the scrappy little knife at her belt, and I just knocked her hand away. You know what happens when somebody pulls on me. They meet Martha.

  Yeah, I’ve got Martha right here next to me, all three feet of her, barbed wire wrapped around this solid metal core. You know what happens when I swing it, right? You’ve been on the other end of Martha, a long time ago. Before all this. When Martha was my granddad’s and all we had of the past was stories and piles of junk to salvage.

  That turned her, getting an eye on Martha, and so she wheedled with me.

  She burst into tears and said you were her whole goddamn life. She wanted to live some kind of fairytale with you.

  “I’ve changed too much for her,” Suldana says, “I can’t go back now.”

  I just started getting this sour look on my face. I keep telling you to stay away from women like Suldana. They get smitten real fast and don’t like being all alone. That’s not good, you know, considering how you are and all. She went on about how it would all change once you two got married, and I rolled my eyes because who does that shit anymore? She was farther gone than I thought. Maybe I should have just spilled all this to her sooner. Maybe that woulda made it easier. Guess I’ll never know.

  And then she sat there and asked me straight out how long you’ve been consorting with monsters instead of fighting them the way you told everyone you were.

  So I told her.

  Oh, shut that mouth, none of this was my fault. All I did was tell her the truth straight out. It was all pretty plain anyway. Hey, you’re my friend, I got obligations to you and all, but Suldana’s a woman, and I got obligations to other women, too. She’s got a right to know what’s happening out here at the edge of everything. She’s old enough, now.

  I said yea, you come by some nights. We talk and such, and sometimes more. I told her how it all started, with you wanting to get your hands on my Martha to slay all those beasts out there, and how the first time you held Martha up to one of those monsters your eyes met and you were smitten. I didn’t expect Suldana to understand that part; she was raised in the village, there in the ruins of those glory days, and they filled her head with social niceties from some other time, shit that doesn’t fit this world the way you and I do.